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Author: Clair O'Neill

As mobile devices are becoming more accessible to a wider demographic of consumers and as mobile shoppers are becoming more confident, we’re seeing steady growth in the amount of people making purchases on their smartphones and tablets.

However, conversion rates lag behind those on other devices, and the checkout can be one of the biggest barriers to mobile commerce.

Mobile apps help to attract new customers, increase engagement and drive conversions, but this often requires the user to keep coming back.

Some in-app offerings will be enough to keep the user returning, but other times the users might need a little reminder to send them back to the mobile apps they may not have opened in a while.

According to data from Localytics, 22% of people who download an app only use it once. This means that marketers really need to be thinking about how they can attract their customers back to their mobile apps.

This thinking should go beyond just app downloads and focus more on value and engagement. This can be done in a number of ways, in terms of marketing, these can include push notifications, location-based services, in-app messaging and SMS.

By combining the use of mobile apps and location-based services, marketers are able to reach out to their customers in the right place and at the right time to help increase engagement and drive conversions.

With GPS technologies becoming more advanced and 4G connections now available across many parts of the UK, location-based services are becoming more precise than ever. This is opening up a huge opportunity for marketers to send their customers targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.

Currently, marketers are using GPS technology, as well as cellular and wifi connections, to locate people and their devices in order to push out relevant information to them.

For marketers who want to target specific areas, like an aisle in a supermarket or a display in a shop for example, these satellite signals not only drain the device’s battery life but also aren’t always as accurate as you might want them to be. This is where iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) comes in.

As the number of devices with NFC (near field communication) technology continues to grow, we are seeing a handful of UK brands using NFC in their marketing campaigns to help drive sales and raise brand awareness, all through the use of mobile.

Is this something marketers should be considering for their campaigns?

With over 60% of the UK owning a smartphone and just under a fifth of the population owning tablets, it’s vital that businesses and brands are thinking about the different types of device their websites are being viewed on, and also what situations the users are in when viewing websites.

The average person has around 41 apps on their phone; these range from social and gaming apps, to daily deals, retail and media apps.

As mobile traffic continues to gain traction on web traffic, and as apps continue to be a vital channel for keeping the consumer engaged, it has never been more important for brands to monitor how their apps are performing to ensure they are delivering the experience users expect.

As it stands, Google Play and Apple’s App Store have around 700,000 live apps each, followed by Windows with 126,530 and Amazon with just over 50,000 apps. As app numbers continue to increase, so is the competition for search-friendly and visible apps.

A number of people are starting to talk about app store SEO as developers and marketers look for ways to ensure their apps can be found across the app stores.

We’ll be focusing on both the App Store and Google Play for this post, solely because there currently isn’t enough research on SEO for Windows Marketplace or Amazon's Appstore.